Fox's Juan Williams Gets It Half Right on Guns

My latest book, "Dear Father, Dear Son," focuses on the importance
of fathers -- and the increasing number of children who grow up in homes
without one. Fox's Juan Williams understands this -- sort of. He gets the
"what," but not the "why."

Williams, in a Wall Street Journal piece called "Race and the Gun
Debate," writes: "Gun-related violence and murders are concentrated among
blacks and Latinos in big cities. Murders with guns are the No. 1 cause of
death for African-American men between the ages of 15 and 34. But talking
about race in the context of guns would also mean taking on a subject that
can't be addressed by passing a law: the family-breakdown issues that lead
too many minority children to find social status and power in guns."

Williams is, of course, right. There is a direct link between no
father in the home and an increased chance that the child will drop out of
high school, go on welfare and have a criminal record. This is
particularly acute in the black community, where over 70 percent of black
kids are born outside of wedlock. In some communities, like Southeast
Washington, D.C, a staggering 84 percent of children live in homes without
a father.

Roland Warren is the former head of National Fatherhood
Initiative. Warren, a black man, read "Dear Father, Dear Son." He called
it "powerful" and that it ought to be "required reading" in middle and
high schools in America. And Vincent DiCaro, vice president of the NFI,
told The Washington Times: "(People) look at a child in need, in poverty
or failing in school, and ask, 'What can we do to help?' But what we do is
ask, 'Why does that child need help in the first place?' And the answer is
often it's because (the child lacks) a responsible and involved father."

Williams gets the connection between no dads and violence. "The
statistics are staggering," he writes. "In 2009, for example, the Centers
for Disease Control reported that 54 percent of all murders committed,
overwhelmingly with guns, are murders of black people. Black people are
about 13 percent of the population. The Justice Department reports that
between 1980 and 2008, 'blacks were six times more likely than whites to
be homicide victims and seven times more likely than whites to commit
homicide.'"

This brings us the "why." Liberals like Williams need to
acknowledge the damage the welfare state -- and their support of it -- has
done to the family.